


Neon Pink

by floweryhanzo



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Nepal, Post-Blackwatch, Shambali, body image issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 10:21:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12274440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweryhanzo/pseuds/floweryhanzo
Summary: Some things are hard to put into words - even between friends.





	Neon Pink

* * *

 

They leave the monastery behind, footsteps silent over the hardened path up along the mountain’s side. The path is marked by rows of prayer flags, some hanging above their heads and some lining up the cliff’s sides, either climbing along the rock of the mountain or tied to sticks that mark the path’s edge and the fall down towards the valley below. The world has turned green very fast; when Genji first arrived, it was still winter, and the scenery was snowy and where it wasn’t, it was brown and dead all the same. Now suddenly the monsoon rains have brought it all back to life, and around them, the grass grows stubbornly out of the ground that only weeks earlier had seemed incapable of sustaining any life at all.

For the first time in days, it isn’t raining now. The sun shines bright from a near cloudless sky above, its rays hot even against Genji’s lightly clothed form. He follows Zenyatta, much like he followed the monk to Nepal in the first place, up towards an unknown destination. In the beginning, it took a lot of sweet-talking, a lot of convincing and a small bit of trickery to cheat Genji into coming here with him. They’d met by coincidence, and Zenyatta had taken notice of the young cyborg as if sensing the lack of balance within him, but even now, a few months later, Genji isn’t sure if Zenyatta can help him. Overwatch couldn’t, not by saving his life, not by giving his new existence a purpose. Wandering the world couldn’t - no matter where he’d gone, there had never been a place where a freak like him could mix in with the crowd. What could an omnic do?

Still, he’d finally given in. Zenyatta, if nothing else, was very convincing when he wanted to be so.

The higher up they climb, the more worn and faded the prayer flags turn. Finally, Zenyatta slows down and stops at the edge of a cliff: he reaches his hand to touch the flags hanging above them, the string attached with a simple knot to a pair of sticks standing like a gate above them, and turns to look at Genji. The cyborg stops a few steps behind him, adjusts the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder before tucking his hands inside the pockets of his loose pants, and he tilts his head, eyes sharp over the omnic’s form.

”From here, you can see the village below us,” Zenyatta tells him in a happy voice, ”If you wish, you can take a look. It is quite beautiful.”

Genji hesitates for a moment, then nudges himself forwards and steps closer to the cliff’s edge. There, quite far below them, stands the village the Shambali monastery loosely belongs to. The buildings are all painted in the shades of red and orange, and they stand bright against the greenery that has taken over the mountains. A small smile presses upon Genji’s lips; he kneels down and reaches his hands into the grass, leaning closer to the fall.

Zenyatta moves next to him, and together, they look down for a while. Then the omnic touches Genji’s shoulder and gestures towards the other direction, where beneath them, the valley opens as a vast stretch of wilderness with meadows ruling over the shapes of the mountains it separates.

”I would like us to sit here for some time. We can meditate if you wish so, but I would rather talk with you today.”

Slowly, Genji nods. He picks himself up from the ground and steps back, finding a small round rock against which he settles next, legs crossed and his bag over his lap. Zenyatta sits beside him - he’s carrying a bag much like Genji’s, sewn and decorated by the hands of the monks at the monastery. From inside it, he pulls a smooth metallic ball and a small pouch full of tools used to carve them; Genji’s seen him work on them before, and his gaze settles upon the omnic's hands now as he picks up a tool to start with. For some time, they’re both quiet, the distant sounds of the village below mixing with the mountain wind and the sounds of birds hidden somewhere in the scarce shrubs growing here and there. Zenyatta’s tool draws a precise, symmetrical circle around the top of the ball before either of them speaks again.

”You have been here for some time now,” he finally says, ”But you have not shared many of your thoughts so far. How do you like it here in Nepal, Genji?”

Genji looks down at his knees. His clothes are worn - he hasn’t replaced them in a while. There hasn’t been a need for it. Sometimes, he’s started coming out of the dormitories without wearing any at all, although at first it seemed strange. Not all the monks wear anything, either; if they do, they wear the same kinds of clothes as Zenyatta now, hand-made like their bags, and mostly serving to show that they are all Shambali. For Genji... his sleeveless top, his baggy pants, he wears them out of habit. There really is no need to do so - not anymore. He’s got nothing to hide but a suit of plated armour, after all.

Picking at a hole in the fabric resting over his knee, he tries to form the thought into an answer.

”I find myself changing here,” he says then, his voice hesitant, ”Becoming less human, and at times it scares me.”

”You will never be any less human, my friend. It is what you were born to be, after all.”

”Still - I am losing touch with that life, Master.”

”Your past life?”

”My past habits. The things that made me feel like a man.”

Zenyatta nods. He carves more shapes into the ball in silence for some time, and Genji watches, waiting for him to lead the conversation forwards.

”What are you scared of?” the omnic finally asks.

”My own apathy. That I have stopped doing the things I have always done because I no longer feel the need to do them. That it is as if the human in me is slowly dying and the machine is replacing him, and yet I seem to feel nothing as it happens.”

”I would call that getting used to what you are now,” Zenyatta says; a strip of metal flicks off the ball’s surface and lands amongst the grass. ”One would hope that it is the first step towards accepting it as well.”

”I don’t want to lose myself.”

Genji’s words linger between them until a breeze carries them away. Another strip, curved into a fine spiral, falls off the ball.

”Are you?” Zenyatta asks then, ”Losing yourself?”

”Am I?” Genji throws it back at him, his mouth curving to a crooked smile.

They look at each other. In the expressionless surface of Zenyatta’s face, Genji swears he can see a smile. Perhaps he’s spent too much time with omnics and too little with humans, and he’s started projecting into them, or perhaps he just knows this one well enough to know what he’s feeling - either way, he takes it as it is.

”What makes you worry about it now?” Zenyatta asks, and as Genji expected, there’s the warmth of a smile in his voice when he speaks.

”My clothes,” Genji replies with a sigh, ”That they are ragged and old, and I had breakfast this morning without wearing any.”

”I don’t think anybody judged you.”

”No, and that’s the worst part. There is nothing to judge. My body no longer needs to be covered up; it is as inoffensive as any other piece of machinery. I am - an object to behold, not a body.”

”That is quite a harsh way to look at it.”

”That is how I feel.”

Zenyatta nods.  
”I understand,” he says then, and this time, his voice is heavy with compassion, ”but I want to press that you have not become any less the man that you were before simply because of your new body, Genji. You may have become more than just a man, but you have not lost the person that you were before. It is all growth, after all; change is inevitable in life, and all change means giving up what was before. In this sense, who you are as a man has changed. It may feel as if you have lost that identity, but in truth, you have merely evolved beyond it.”

Genji swallows. He runs his fingertips over the shapes of his plated arm, over the metal and the artificial muscle, and then turns his palm around and gazes at his fingers, at the seams and gaps between the joints, and a weary sigh escapes him.

”Sometimes I feel almost content in this body,” he speaks slowly, blind and deaf to his surroundings as his focus shifts inwards, ”I forget to feel as if it doesn’t belong to me. In those moments, I feel comfortable and whole, and I enjoy myself again. Then I remember what a freak I have become, and I feel every seam and scar and cable that connects my flesh with this machine, and I feel ashamed of it.”

”Which feeling do you think speaks of your true experience?” Zenyatta asks him calmly, his hand steady and confident as it draws a straight line down across the ball in his grip.

Genji stares at it intently as he thinks.  
”What defines my true experience?” he asks then, his voice as weary as his sigh before, ”What I feel when I am alone, or what I feel as a human being?”

”Aren’t both those things the feelings of a human being? You feel shame because of what you expect others see when they look at you. You worry simultaneously about outside judgement and the lack of it. When you are alone, do you feel like a freak still?"

”I’ve begun to forget about it altogether. I do not focus as much on what I am these days. I focus on what I do more than that.”

”And that is as it should be. Try to close your mind to the thoughts of others, as their judgement is not your burden to bear.”

Slowly, Genji nods. Many thin flakes of metal land in the grass in front of them before he speaks again, but there’s a thought that keeps pressing at him and building up inside him that he’s been holding back for days, perhaps weeks or months already. All it takes is the courage to voice it, but somehow, putting his fear into words seems to take more than he’s got. As he struggles to force it out, a small bird lands on the string holding the prayer flags above ground, and desperately, he focuses his attention on the bird as if to distract himself from the words that finally slip out of his mouth.

”Do you think that I can still be loved, even like this?” he asks, and every nerve, artificial or otherwise, seems to come alive within him.

Some dark part of him expects a reaction from Zenyatta - rejection, perhaps, or judgement, as if the omnic was capable of giving him either - but instead, the monk simply draws another line into the ball to connect two parallel ones, lays down his tool and picks another one out of the small pouch.

”Is that important to you?” Zenyatta asks him, absently and in the tone of mild curiosity, ”Love, and being loved?”

Genji’s breath shakes when he lets it out.

”It used to be,” he says, ”I gave up on it after what... was done to me.”

”Why?”

”I feel unlovable. Disfigured - I... cannot imagine who would love something like this.”

”Someone,” Zenyatta says quietly, ”Someone like you.”

A shiver runs through Genji’s patched spine, but he doesn’t say a thing. Finally, Zenyatta sighs; he lowers his hands, the ball still on them, on his lap and gazes at the mountain peaks drawing up the horizon. The shapes of them seem a hazy shade of purple, a trick of light and mist; Genji looks at them too, but he doesn’t feel like he’s really seeing them at all. Inside its metal shell, his heart is beating painfully.

”Are you not loved then, Genji? Even now, do your friends not love you? Do you feel a lack of affection from those that surround you - or are you yourself, perhaps, incapable of accepting what they are freely offering you?”

Suddenly, it’s hard to breathe. Genji struggles to down a knot in his throat, his gaze lowered to his lap to hide the lining of tears in his eyes.

”You are not unlovable," Zenyatta continues, "Quite the contrary, you are quite charming; you have quick wits, an excellent sense of humour and charisma beyond your years, and I am sure there are very few who survive meeting you without finding themselves suddenly quite fond of you. To answer your question - yes, I do think you can still be loved, and I am sure that you are.”

Unsure whether it’s the casually confident, matter-of-factly tone more than the message spoken that gets to him, Genji feels a tear running down his face. With a shaky hand, he wipes it off his cheek and opens his bag instead, digging through it until he finds a small neon pink cube from inside it. With the press of a fingertip, the cube projects a simple menu above it in the air, and feeling Zenyatta watching him, he connects the device to the communications link attached directly into his ear. He glances at the omnic and struggles to keep his voice steady.

”I would like to stop talking now,” he says in a breathless voice, ”If you’d let me, I’d rather be quiet.”

”Of course, Genji. You have said a lot today and I do feel it is enough for one day. May I ask you, before you retreat to silence - what is that thing?”

A shaky chuckle escapes Genji.  
”A music player,” he explains, ”I brought it here with me, knowing that I won’t be able to connect with the outside world for a while. I don’t mind being away from people, but I didn’t want to leave my music behind as well.”

”Ah,” Zenyatta lets out, his voice warm, ”Naturally.”

For a minute, Genji moves his fingertip over the projected menus, but just before pressing play and letting the player take over his auditory channels, he hesitates.

”Would you... like to share it with me?” he asks, turning a timid look at Zenyatta, ”I don’t know if you like music, much less the kind that I’d listen to, but - I’m sure you can connect to it with me if you’d like to, Master.”

”I do like music, thank you for asking,” Zenyatta says with a chuckle, then tilts his head and examines the cube in Genji’s hands, ”And I would love to listen to yours with you. That would make me very happy, in fact.”

Despite the ache in his chest, Genji finds himself with a smile again. He lets Zenyatta pick up the player in his hands and waits as the omnic connects to it. Then, once the cube is back in his hands, Genji chooses a playlist and closes his eyes. Beside him, Zenyatta picks up his craft again; he’s still carving when Genji peers at him, the omnic's legs crossed and head bobbing calmly from side to side in tune to the music. A breathless laugh escapes the cyborg as he closes his eyes again, his body tilting until he can feel it press against Zenyatta’s solid form; he rests his head over the omnic’s shoulder, and under the afternoon sun’s warmth, he feels quite alright after all.

 

 


End file.
